Trio of Sorcery (34 page)

When she finally moved out and started fighting the thing, Tom realized exactly what was going on. In college he'd had some friends in the fencing club, and some of
them
had a subgroup that went out sparring with real, Renaissance-style rapiers. They were careful, and they were very, very good, and a couple of them had gone on to careers in Hollywood as stunt sword fighters and coaches.

Ellen's avatar moved like that.

This stuff couldn't be coded for. The movements were just too subtle, the patterns too complicated. And yes, the devs had overridden the code for the two swordswomen,
reducing the recharge time for their powers to zero, beefing up their reaction time to “as fast as you can mash buttons,” and seriously buffing the accuracy and damage.

But no avatar could possibly move like that.

Ell was outfighting Kathy, who had played this game practically every day since they rolled out the first, buggy, beta version. The only reason she wasn't doing more damage than Kathy was because of her inherent type—bricks were coded to be slow and there was nothing to be done about that. Kathy could get in a hit and a half for every hit Ell made.

But.

But—

Ell was doing strikes and move combinations Tom had never seen outside of a live, human fighter.

As crazy as it sounded, as impossible as it seemed, there was only one possible conclusion.

Stevie wasn't an avatar. Somehow, that elf
was
Ellen McBride.

Impossible.

Inconceivable.

Unbidden, his mind supplied the quote from
The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

But if that was her—what was going to happen when the Wendigo hit—

It hit.

And he didn't know how he knew, but he did. Red numbers exploded out of her—and pain. Real pain.

Tom yelped and mashed buttons, pouring healing energy recklessly into her as if he had bottomless wells to draw on—which he did; they'd overridden that too. It wasn't god-mode, it was all hard-coded, so it wasn't anything the Wendigo could steal with a flick of a bit switch. But getting the powers to work still depended on his reaction time, and—

And the damn thing was hurting her when it hit her. So it was up to him to fix it. Fast. As fast as possible.

Sweat began pouring down his face and he let Kathy and Erik get dangerously low a time or two while he concentrated on Ell. If they dropped, he could get them up again, but if Ell dropped, what would happen?

He didn't know. According to the world book, you weren't actually
dead
unless you abandoned the avatar to find someone to bring you back to life. So if she just stayed there until he got her up, she
should
be fine…

She'd better be fine. Because the plan…

In the real world, sweat was pouring down his face, as he unconsciously jinked his real body around to semi-match the movements of his avatar.

This was bad. This was very bad. The plan—

He saw it coming. Saw the Wendigo's eyes suddenly light up with greed, an expression that no sane person would ever have coded for, and felt a wash of real-world terror.
Watched Kathy, Erik, and Ell freeze as the Wendigo's fear weapon hit them right through all of their protections. Watched the Wendigo's giant club come up and sweep down and smash Ell's avatar into the turf.

Saw something that—again—had never been coded for: a burst of purple-black incandescence shot out of the Wendigo as it combined the bits of loot and prepared to step out of the game world and into the real one.

He didn't need the typed
“now!”
that Ell's avatar (thankgodthankgodthankgod!) screamed at him across the team channel. His finger was already mashed down on the revival spell so hard that he almost dislocated it.

Ell's avatar came to life with a wash of light so bright that he had to shade his eyes. Then as the light passed through his shading hand into his brain, he realized it wasn't the kind of light you could shield against.

WTF? He was seeing magic?

Never mind. This might be magic, but it needed energy, and her bar was dropping fast as she poured everything into her spells. Black energy warred with white as the Ell and the Wendigo stood frozen. Tom fed her, then ran his avatar over to hers to pass potions to her. This was all in the plan. The Wendigo had to believe that she was fighting it to the last moment—

Suddenly the white light went out, as if it had been blown out. The purple-black light flooded the screen, then vanished. And so did the Wendigo.

Now he mashed another button so fast and hard that he
did
dislocate a finger joint. The button that took down the last server.

Then he ran for the cube that Ell was in.

Her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, her hair looked like she had stuck her finger in a light socket, and the last time he'd seen anyone who looked that exhausted, it'd been the winner of a marathon race.

But she was grinning from ear to ear and cradling something in her hands. She held it up for him to see.

Inside the promotional snow globe from Many Worlds Online, a tiny, and very lively, Wendigo raged.

They all gathered at the incinerator solemnly, yet Ell sensed the suppressed manic grins behind their quiet faces.

“You know,” she said, holding the snow globe carefully in its nest of bubble wrap, “I've never understood why, in all of the movies about terrible monsters and magical dinguses, nine times out of ten the heroes take the damned thing and
put it somewhere safe.
I mean, come on! Sink it in concrete, an earthquake rips the building up. Drop it in the ocean, a shark eats it and gets caught by a fisherman. Shoot it into orbit, it gets picked up by an astronaut. Shoot it
out
of orbit, it gets brought back by an alien!”

“They want sequels,” Tom said helpfully.

“
Oy
. No sequels for us. I'm with Elrond. Destroy the Ring, baby.” She eyeballed the open incinerator door, then shot the wrapped snow globe into the heart of the glow, sending her dissipation spell after it in a burst of power, fueled by Toby, that left her a little weak-kneed. “Get out of my universe,” she said quickly, before any of the others could quip “Hasta la vista, baby,” or “I'll be back.”

Words had power.

She felt the Wendigo dissolve into atoms, into wisps, into smoke on the wind, and finally, into the vague and amorphous memory of a memory it had been before the gamers got hold of it. She let out a sigh of relief.

“Your patches will take now,” she told the team.

“I've written some extensive descriptor changes on it too,” Erik said. “That's going in with the code patch. I put in some self-contradictory stuff, and borrowed some Lovecraft but used the wrong Elder Gods. The OCD trolls will be all over it, but…”

“No buts. You guys never read the forums anyway,” Kathy said scornfully, calling up a weak laugh from the rest of them.

Mark Taylor ran his hands through his thinning hair. “Go home,” he ordered. “You've earned your rest. And you”—he looked pointedly at Ell, who cocked an eyebrow at him—“you've earned yourself a big fat check. And a lifetime account. If you want it.”

“I'll admit, this game is growing on me.” She grinned.
“Besides, I have a bud who's been bugging me to join since the beta rolled out. Guess I have no excuse now.”

“Guess not. Stop by Accounting and get your check and your account key.” Mark waved tiredly at Ell, then followed the others back up the stairs, presumably to head home himself.

All but Tom.

She cocked an eyebrow at
him.
“Something on your mind?”

“I saw your magic,” he said flatly. “When you and the Wendigo duked it out and you planted that misdirection spell on him. I saw that.”

“Do tell.” Interesting. Very interesting.

“Does that mean I'm a witch?”

“Techno-shaman. And no, it just means you can see magic. Or maybe you always could, and you've just
allowed
yourself to see it now.” She waited to see what he would make of that.

He mulled it over. “Could I be? Could you teach me?”

She scratched her head and answered both questions. “Maybe. Depends on how bad you want it.”

He mulled that over too. “I'll think about it. Buy you a cup of coffee?”

She chuckled. From the look on his face, she didn't think he was going to ponder for too long. She knew his kind. She'd taught them before, like Jin Lee. They got hold of something and they couldn't let it go until they understood it. And then there would be one more good
guy between the world and the bad things out there that wanted to break in. “Deal. And you can give me advice on the best archetype to roll up to start with in this game of yours.”

“And you can tell me how you exorcise a stealth fighter.”

She laughed. “I'll go one better. I'll tell you
why.
”

Yep. One more good guy. Life was excellent.

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help for “Ghost in the Machine” of game developers Vince “Dark Watcher” D'Amelio and Melissa “War Witch” Bianco of the MMORPG City of Heroes/City of Villians/Going Rogue produced by NCSoft/Paragon Studios (
www.cityofheroes.com
). They helped me balance the line between “this information will be outdated tomorrow” and “too much hand-waving, smoke, and mirrors” with their invaluable insights into the life and work of a dev and critique of the story.

I would also like to thank the Mission Architect team at the same game for allowing me to put Diana Tregarde as the contact for my Guest Author arc “Mystery on the Boardwalk.” Go to
www.cityofheroes.com
for details and a fourteen-day free trial if you want to see this story in action!